The present invention relates to a dialing unit of a telephone mounted on a mobile body or similar body and, more particularly, to a voice recognition dialing unit operable in response to voice inputted thereon.
Communication equipment of the kind using voice recognition technologies are under development and include a vehicle-mounted telephone having a voice recognition dialing unit. It is preferable with the voice recognition dialing unit that from the safety standpoint the user of the telephone be capable of originating a call without touching it when operating the vehicle.
A conventional voice recognition dialing unit includes a voice inputting section on which the caller, i.e., the user of the telephone may enter a command by voice. A voice characteristics extracting section extracts the characteristics of voice entered on the inputting section. A registered voice recording section registers and records the user's voice as voice patterns. A subscriber storing section stores in one-to-one correspondence the telephone numbers and names of subscribers with whom the user may communicate. A recognizing section recognizes an entered voice command by comparing the input voice with the voice characteristics registered in the registered voice recording section. A processing section executes a call origination processing in response to the recognized voice command and according to a preprogrammed procedure for call origination. Key switches are operable to input digital data to the processing section. A call originating section reads, in response to a call origination instruction fed thereto from the processing section, the dial number of the corresponding subscriber and thereby controls the generation of dial pulses. A dial pulse generating section outputs dial pulses to a communication line. A registered response storing section is loaded with predetermined response information for responding on the basis of an instruction from the processing section. An indicating section indicates response information.
It has been customary with the above-stated processing section to execute call originating operations and verifications thereby by an interactive procedure between the user and the processing section. A specific interactive procedure will be described hereinafter.
To begin with, the user of the telephone voices a recall command "RECALL MEMORY". The voice entered on the voice inputting section is recognized as a recall command by the voice recognizing function assigned to the voice characteristics extracting section, registered voice storing section, and recognizing section. The recognized recall command is fed from the recognizing section to the processing section which in turn applies it to the registered response storing section. In response, the registered response storing section delivers, for example, response information "NAME, PLEASE" stored beforehand in the indicating section, causing the indicating section to indicate it. Then, the user voices a desired name registered in the subscriber storing section as a command word. Again, the previously mentioned voice recognizing function recognizes the name as a command word. Then, the indicating section produces a sound such as "PIP" as a response. This is followed by either one of two different procedures, i.e., a procedure A wherein a dialing operation is executed immediately and a procedure B wherein the user verifies the desired subscriber's telephone number.
In the procedure A, as the user enters a voice command "SEND", for example, the processing section operates the call origination control section and dial signal generating section to output a calling signal to the telephone line. At the same time, the indicating section indicates a particular word registered in the registered response storing section such as "DIALING".
In the procedure B, as the user voices "VERIFY", the indicating section indicates the registered telephone number. Then, a call is originated in the same manner as in the procedure A. If the indicated telephone number is wrong as determined by the verifying step, the user enters a voice command such as "CLEAR" so as to return the program to the initial step.
The problem with the above specific procedure is that when some of the names stored in the registered voice recording section have similar patterns, the word representative of the right name is not always the first-place result of recognition. When a word representative of a name similar to the desired one is indicated, the call originating operation has to be terminated midway. Therefore, the dialing unit implemented by such a call origination procedure not only suffers from low recognition rate but also forces the user to start the call originating operation over again.
Another approach available in the art for the verification of the desired subscriber is the key switches which the user may manipulate to cause a plurality of names having similar voice patterns to be indicated. However, operating the key switches while driving the vehicle is not desirable from the safety standpoint, as discussed earlier.
The response for the verification of the subscriber has heretofore been implemented as a telephone number, as stated previously. It rarely occurs, however, that the user memorizes every one of the subscriber numbers or similar telephone numbers assigned to remote stations. Since the user enters the subscriber's names and the associated telephone numbers with care, it will suffice to produce a voice response representative of only the name for verification. It follows that the names may be stored in a memory built in the addressee recording section as synthetic voice data in the event when they are registered together with the associated telephone numbers. This, however, would result in the need for an extra memory capacity for synthesizing the names. This, coupled with the fact that the stored data have to be held semipermanently, renders the address management and data storage of the address storing section complicated and, therefore, expensive.